How do you Build a Successful in-house SEO Team?

SEO is a long-term investment that you say to yourself. In the beginning, it is really just an investment, without getting anything in return. But after about 6 months you start to attract quite a few organic visitors. After a year you are doing well. And after two years you are simply a market leader in your industry. It can go that fast if you do it right. – successful in-house SEO team

But how do you build a successful in-house SEO team? And how do you integrate this ‘new’ team into your current marketing department? A tip of the veil: you probably already have the knowledge!

Why an in-house SEO team at all?

You currently outsource the SEO of your website to an external agency. This is going fine so far. So why break up this successful partnership in the first place and do it yourself? Provided you build this up properly, it offers you various parts.

First of all, you can take steps faster. This is something you also see in larger organizations. There are more stakeholders, more layers, and more people involved and everyone has their own interests. This is good quality, but it takes a lot of time. When you have all the men internally, you can switch gears a lot faster.

Second, you can give all the attention to yourself. An SEO agency also wants to make you successful but must stay within the responsible range. If there is an hour to spare somewhere, it is of course preferred to be spent internally. This is understandable. If you have your own team over, you decide which time goes where.

Finally, the piece of content creation comes into play. If it’s your business and you have an affinity with it, you can design content faster and better. This is also the case for our own agency. We know from experience that the best content is created when our customers have actively involved themselves.

Hybrid team: what to in-house and what to outsource?

Of course, you don’t have to do everything all at once. There will always be parts that are better outsourced to an agency. It is impossible to say in advance what you should outsource and what you can do in-house. A lot depends on the potential you already have in your home at the moment.

Do you have a development department? You can teach them the technical tricks of the trade. Do you already employ copywriters and/or social media marketers? They can be trained to become on-page SEO specialists. And are your salespeople trained in building relationships and making new contacts? Then they are extremely suitable for the PR and link-building department.

Nevertheless. Then your current staff must, of course, be trained. And that takes a captain!

Get a captain

It is not for nothing that almost every team sport still has a captain. The captain does the communication outside, sets the lines within the field and is probably either one of the better, or the one with the most experience. If you want to set up an in-house SEO team, it is important to appoint a captain first.

Search engine optimization is a broad field. You have to deal with technical aspects, content creation, and a bit of relationship management and PR. There are specialists for all these tasks, but the captain must at least master all these facets in the basics. In this way he can maintain the helicopter view and adjust it at a strategic level. As a specialist, you tend to think only in your own street. If you have someone who directs you and coaches you on the field, you will only be happy with this in the long run.

Create processes and provide the right SEO tools

SEO is a profession for specialists, but every company needs processes. Even if you are still such an expert in your SEO part, regularity and certainty are still important factors. Before you hire people from outside or retrain your current staff, it is therefore important that the processes are in place. Which steps do you go through, and what do you document? Where do you document it? Who reports to whom and why? With what frequency do you adjust your goals? It’s just a fraction of the questions you ask yourself. Document the steps that must be followed and invest time in setting up concrete and detailed processes.

The human brain stops somewhere. You, therefore, need a piece of technology for support. Make sure your in-house SEO team has the right tools. We have listed the three tools that should not be missing in our opinion!

Screaming Frog:

On-page and technique is the basis of search engine optimization. Screaming Frog should therefore not be missing in any toolset. This spider comes closest to Google’s crawler. It maps your website from A to Z. You are not only presented with points for improvement in detail. The tool also supports your team on a strategic level by providing you with information about website structure, internal links, SEO titles and much more. You get the data ready and ready on your plate and only have to draw the conclusions yourself.

SEMRush:

SEMrush is perhaps the best all-around SEO tool out there right now. You can monitor your website, find new keywords, check competitors, go through link-building profiles, do traffic analysis, and much more. All in all a wonderful all-around tool that you can really do anything with.

Ahrefs:

When it comes to finding new keywords and doing link-building analyses, Ahrefs should not be missed. You can highlight your competitors from A to Z and see in detail which page they score on which keyword. The same applies to competitor link building. With the link-intersection tool, you can compare your website with that of competitors and see exactly which links they have that you don’t have yet.

The above tools are fairly all-round and in principle, this is enough for your SEO team. Yet there are dozens of other tools in SEO land. Every tool has its strengths and weaknesses and it also depends very much on personal preference. This way you can also add other tools to your ‘ SEO weapons of choice ‘. Think of tools like Moz, Majestic, Mangools and SE Ranking. However, there are also several free tools available on the web. Starting with Google’s toolset itself: Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Complement this with tools such as Siteliner, Brokenlinkcheck.com and others and you have the perfect toolset in-house.

Always provide impulses from the outside

Now you can basically do your entire SEO in-house. However, it does not hurt to have an external party take a look for specific parts and specialist work. If you hire an SEO agency, they can assist you with specific aspects. Think of complex technical issues such as an SEO migration, writing certain long copy for a competitive keyword, a piece of strategy or as an addition to your internal link building strategy. The basics must be in order, but you must not be stubborn and insist on doing everything yourself. An SEO agency is a perfect addition to a solid team.

Ready, set…..go!

You are ready to go. With a Plan, You can set up your own in-house SEO team in just a few easy steps. You don’t just need to hire new staff. Easily You can also train your current staff and have them partially take on the tasks. Just make sure that technology, content, and PR are covered, regardless of whether you outsource or do this in-house. And always make sure you have outside knowledge to watch with you. A role that we are of course happy to take on. Are you setting up an in-house SEO team? But could you use some outside help? We are happy to take on this role!